


Worth the Ache

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Prison Break
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 05:37:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7301620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written post-S2, in a world where Michael and Sara go their separate ways after the events in Panama, only to find each other again in Chicago three years later under interesting circumstances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a friend back in the day who was a huge M/S shipper. The prompts she gave me were Post-Sona with Michael and Sara attempting to be *friends.* Don't ask me where the rest of it came from!
> 
> Warning: There are spoilers for the film _Somewhere In Time_ in this piece.

_I wanna wrap the moon around us_  
Lay beside you, skin on skin  
Make love 'til the sun comes up  
'Til the sun goes down again  
'Cause I need you  


~from _I Need You_ by Tim McGraw  & Faith Hill  


  
When Michael Scofield had climbed on board the El in the early afternoon, it had been relatively empty. Now, as the commuters piled on, he had to jerk his coat into his lap to make room for the African-American woman who attempted to sit down next to him without even asking him to get it out of her way. She sank onto the bench with a heavy sigh and promptly fell asleep with her chin against her chest while he wondered at her exhaustion. Dressed in a power suit, she obviously worked at one of the financial corporations in the downtown area, and due to her absolute ability to fall asleep despite being surrounded by hundreds of commuters, she must have been up since early that morning, or had just had a really exhausting day.

Michael remembered those days himself, when work knocked him out. Back when he had a job. Before Fox River. Before Sona.

He found himself worrying that his seatmate might miss her stop, but her head lifted about ten seconds before they announced the Randall Street exit, and she, having never said a word to him, picked up her briefcase and prepared to disembark as the train slowed.

Happy to have the seat to himself again, at least momentarily, he dropped his coat back into the empty spot. As the train lurched forward, he glanced up and saw a flash of red as someone sat down about four rows in front of him, sharing the bench seat with another woman. His fingers knotted in the material of his now-forgotten coat.

This was why he rode the El all day some days. Well, he didn’t have anything else to do, that was true, but he had this secret hope that one day, somehow, he might run into her. He knew she was back in Chicago, just like he was, but he hadn’t come up with any clever way to call her, or see her without looking like a total ass. Linc said he should just be a man and call, but Linc didn’t know Dr. Tancredi the way Michael did. She wasn’t as hard-nosed as she liked to think she was, but he had given her plenty of reason to become hard-nosed.

And he just wasn’t as brave as he used to be.

He’d seen her before, but not on this route. The times he’d seen her, she’d always been alone, but she’d also always been briskly walking somewhere once she got off the train, so he’d never followed her. He knew it was cowardice. But today, for whatever reason, he had chosen a route he’d never seen her on, and now here she was. If he didn’t take this chance, he ought to concede that fate might never hand him another opportunity. 

She rode the train for almost 38 minutes. As the El slowed again, Michael had no idea what stop they were near, but he got to his feet as he watched her do the same. He scuttled forward, allowing a couple to go in front of him, but not losing sight of her hair. It was long again, hanging past her shoulders halfway down her back, and its natural color. As though she’d washed the dye and all that that dye had meant right out. 

But of course she would have. It had been almost three years since he’d seen her. If he allowed himself to remember it correctly, the last time he’d seen her, her hair had been mostly red again anyway, the brown having faded in the Panamanian sun.

Now, he could see she had her own coat draped over her arm. It was early fall, and so on the train it was too warm for an outer layer, but getting off the train, and walking any distance would require something warmer than shirt sleeves. As the trail of people steadily made their way off the train, Michael managed to stay close behind her—but not too close, as he was unsure what he should do. Maybe he’d just stalk her to wherever she was going. He couldn’t see himself actually saying anything to her.

But he wanted to say something to her, and badly.

The few people that he had carefully let build up between them seemed to melt away, and then the brisk wind—the reason Chicago was called _The Windy City_ —took a piece of paper right out of Sara’s hand as she swung her coat around her shoulders. What turned out to be a brochure landed squarely against his chest just as she pivoted, wildly groping for the paper, and Michael took in several things all at once. Her look of utter astonishment as her eyes fell on his face; how the sweater she wore fell across her rounded abdomen as her arms lifted slightly to ease into the sleeves of her coat; the words on the brochure his hand pulled from against his chest—"The Best Childbirth Class for You and Baby."

"Michael?" Sara Tancredi asked. It had been almost three years since he’d heard her voice, but it sounded just the same. Husky and sweet, the tone curled through him, and though the sight of her pregnant belly had sent stabbing pains through his chest, her voice erased some of the pangs. "Oh, my God! Michael!" she gasped, accepting that it _was_ him, though he’d made no response. When he offered the brochure back to her, she laughed joyfully and threw herself against his chest. "Oh, Michael!" she whispered, her cheek brushing past his as her arms surrounded his shoulders.

It seemed to take him forever to respond, his arms moving like they were underwater, slowly circling her, slowly pulling her tightly to him, slowly bringing her and her baby into the place in his mind where he would never forget how they both felt against his body.

"Hello, Sara," he said stiffly, though his body willingly accepted her weight against it. The embrace was only awkward in his mind, because she clung to him just as she had the day he finally emerged from Sona.

She pulled back, her hands sliding from around his neck to touch his face gently. The look in her eyes told him she wasn’t trusting what she was seeing, so she used her soft, competent doctor’s hands to feel for herself that he was there. "How are you?" she asked enthusiastically.

"I’m well, I’m well," he murmured, pushing her back just a little, just enough that her rounded belly wasn’t pressing into his abdomen. "And you? You look like you’re doing great," he said, and then without his permission, his hand reached out and palmed the protruding part of her anatomy. The whole reason he’d pushed her back was so he didn’t have to feel it, and now he had his hand on it. What the hell was wrong with him?

She laughed again, and her hand joined his on her belly. "Well, yes, I _am_ doing great."

"How far along are you?" he asked, pulling back, disengaging slowly but completely from her touch.

"Six months," she said. "She’s going to be a Christmas baby."

"Ah," Michael said, and out of nowhere the words, "Poor planning on your part," popped out. The fact that he even thought it at all galled him; he didn’t need to imagine Sara in a moment of mad passion with— _who?_ —that had resulted in this pregnancy.

She laughed again—and he wished he’d stayed on the train. Yes, he’d wanted to see her, he’d imagined the scenario a thousand times where he at least got to apologize for his disappearing act in Panama, but he didn’t want to see this. He didn’t want to hear her happy laughter for every aspect of her life that didn’t involve him at all. "Oh, no, not poor planning at all. I purposely did all of this, the date too. It’s probably silly," she dropped his gaze to look at her own hand rubbing over her stomach, "but I’m hoping she’ll be born on the 21st of December. That was my dad’s birthday—so. You know. Just silly. There’s of course no way to know for sure."

"Depending on the whims of fate, are you?" he asked, his eyes roaming over her now that she wasn’t looking directly at him. She’d always been beautiful, he’d known that; he’d been able to see that quite easily, but now, at the height of pregnancy, he was certain he’d never seen her look better. Even the glow his memory had tried to capture of how beautiful she’d looked as he’d made love to her didn’t contain this type of radiance, and he was sure his abrupt departure had stolen any meaning for her from that. Truthfully, his abrupt departure had stolen the beauty of the moment from him as well.

Lifting a hand to push back her windswept hair, she raised her gaze back to his. "Yes, I found that plans don’t always go the way you expect them too." There was no censure in her gaze or in her tone, but Michael’s heart shriveled just a bit in his chest anyway. "How is Lincoln?" she inquired, her voice changing perceptibly, as though she couldn’t believe she’d been standing there for all of 60 seconds without asking that important question.

Michael paused briefly, but then told the truth. After all, wasn’t it ironic? "Linc’s great, doing fantastically, really. He and Jane just had another baby, as a matter of fact."

"Another baby?"

"Yes, they’ve got two little ones now. A boy and a girl. Very productive, my brother," Michael said, grinning unapologetically. "He’s got a great life. He’s got everything he should have ever had."

"That’s wonderful to hear, I thought they might get married when we were in Panama," Sara replied, her eyes searching his face. "What about you? Do you have a great life, too?"

The smile that Michael forced his lips into was neither natural nor comfortable, especially following the gleeful expression he’d had while speaking of his brother. To his credit he didn’t try to lie, he just evaded the question. "Not as good as you, obviously. I’ve not gotten married, and I don’t have any pending Christmas babies."

Sara pursed her lips, looking faintly embarrassed. Michael would have asked what was wrong, but the blush that stole into her cheeks sucked the air from his lungs and reminded him of the night when the rush of blood beneath her skin had turned her to live roses beneath his fingertips. She had been velvet under his hands, and the scent he had longed for in the unending dankness of Sona. She had been the perfect flower beneath him, but he’d still cut her lose, unable to fathom a time when he could stand to be in the presence of such beauty. "I’m not married, either," she said, dipping her head slightly. Then she lifted her chin and announced, "I’m 33 years old. I wanted to have a baby. So I went to a sperm bank."

His relief was something akin to unspeakable joy, because he literally could not respond to her. It wasn’t even because he thought they could ever be together, but just knowing that it hadn’t turned out picture perfect for her after the fact helped him to not feel so alone. He loved his brother, and he loved Jane, Lincoln’s ass-kicking-turned-domestic wife, but sometimes their picket-fenced life was nothing but a reminder that he had pushed away the only person he’d ever wanted to share a similar life with.

"Yeah, that’s usually a conversation killer," Sara offered with slight amusement creasing her face. "Why people would be more comfortable knowing some guy knocked me up and ran off and left me than to know I chose this is really strange."  
  
" _I wouldn’t be more comfortable knowing some guy knocked you up,_ Michael thought bitterly _, because I’d be that guy, on some level anyway._ Aloud he reasoned, "It’s surprising, is all. I don’t think people would look at you and see someone who would need to parent alone. I’m sure there are plenty of men willing to father your child."

He didn’t know why he said it. As soon as it was out of his mouth, he knew he’d just given her the perfect opportunity. But he couldn’t even flinch from it, couldn’t disagree, couldn’t do anything except let her say it, let her feel it, let it soak the air between them. "Well, the one I wanted wasn’t interested," she said quietly, again without accusation. She paused a moment and then asked, "You busy? Want to get a bite?"

His speechlessness didn’t last as long this time. "Sure," he found himself answering, as she pointed up the track towards the train station with a tilt of her head. Following close behind her, he only wondered how he could possibly choke food past the giant lump in his throat _._

  
  
  


Sara Tancredi had decided long ago that her life would only be what she made of it. Sure she could sit around bemoaning the fact that Michael Scofield had left her high and dry in Panama, or she could get on with her life. She could lose herself in a bottle of whiskey or up a hypodermic needle, she could sit around thinking about all the people who she had lost, or she could just get up and move.

So that’s what she’d done. She’d gotten up and moved, until moving felt natural and good again. The day she decided to create her own family, she had cried tears of joy for finally having the strength and courage to make her life what she wanted instead of waiting for something to happen.

So waiting changed from an idyllic fantasy where Michael came back and begged for her to forgive him and take him back (which she always did, but only after he’d really sweated it out) to waiting to see if the artificial insemination took, to waiting to see if the sonogram showed a boy or a girl, to waiting for December to arrive and knowing her little bundle of joy wasn’t far behind _._

As she got off the El train, on her way home from her monthly doctor’s appointment, she ran into him, and the happiness she felt at seeing him was something she suspected would be similar to what she would feel the first time she held her child in her arms.

But as she invited him to dinner, she told herself it was only because she needed to know he was all right, that he hadn’t drowned under what Sona had done to him, that he hadn’t disappeared from the earth as surely as he had from her life.

And so they talked. Well, mostly he talked while she ate, because she couldn’t go longer than two hours without either a snack or a restroom, and when she prodded him to eat his meal, he blanched a little and said, "I’m not eating for two, guess I’m not as hungry."

She eyed his turkey sandwich covetously. "I could probably eat your meal too, without batting an eyelid. But I’ve made a deal with myself that I only eat until I’m not starving anymore, as opposed to stuffing myself. Otherwise I’ll end up weighing 250 pounds before this baby’s born."

He scoffed, and pushed his plate towards her. "You look great. I say eat if you want to."

She waggled a finger at him. "No, no, Scofield, do _not_ enable me. You have to help me stay strong." She flashed a smile as he tugged his plate back towards his chest. "So, no luck finding a job?" she asked.

"Well, like a mentioned, I can get a job, but it’s the incessant questions and people wanting to see the tats that really just drive me crazy. I’ve had four different jobs since I’ve been back, but I’ve left each of them, for similar reasons." She imagined he wore long sleeved shirts like the green one he currently had on all the time just because of that.

Thinking about his tattoos had always caused her stomach to pitch lustfully, and his casual mentioning of them proved time hadn’t changed that simple fact. Sara picked up her last French fry, feigning nonchalance. "When did you come back to Chicago?" she asked.

He dropped her gaze and fiddled with one of his own fries. "Over a year ago."

Her chest tightened. She’d known he had no intention of contacting her, ever, but knowing he’d been back that long confirmed it for her. Instead of dwelling on that, she asked another question. "Where were you before that?"

"All over. South America for a while. Then I went to Europe; I spent six months in Australia. I hung around South Africa for a while even. But finally, Linc wanted me to come home. He wanted me to be a part of his kids’ lives. I couldn’t say no." He picked up a fry and ate it, his gaze wandering over to her empty plate for a moment before scooping up a few of his potatoes and dropping them in front of her. "You can’t say no either," he said as she opened her mouth. "A few extra won’t hurt you, and I won’t eat all of them. Can’t waste ‘em."

She picked up a potato in agreement, but said, "If you aren’t happy here, Michael, you can say no. You deserve to be happy too."

He shook his head and looked around the crowded diner they sat in. "I wasn’t happy anywhere, so at least now I’m near my family."

Sara wanted to ask him so many questions. She remembered how he’d been when he came out of Sona, how he hadn’t wanted to talk, but instead he’d just wanted her close, wanted to lie in the silence together, or create a heated vacuum where the only sounds were moans of pleasure from both of them. He hadn’t wanted to tell her then what was wrong, and because he never had, she hadn’t been all that surprised to find him gone one morning, gone without a trace. Devastated, yes, surprised, no.

"I’m sorry, Sara," he said quietly, bringing his eyes back to hers. The intensity that had always been a part of him, what she knew to be determination while in Fox River had become desperation in the aftermath of Sona. Now it just seemed to be apologetic resignation. "I’m sorry I just left. I should have tried to explain, but I didn’t have the words. I still don’t really, except that you have to know it was me, and my messed up head, not you, or anything you did."

Oddly enough, she did know that, that was the part that she’d always understood, and that was why she’d forgiven him almost minutes after she’d found him gone. Now, she just nodded, afraid to speak and ruin the confidence building between them, as well as display the tears gathering in her throat.

"When I came out, all I wanted was you, and I just thought if I could lose myself in you, the rest wouldn’t matter. But that wasn’t true. I started to feel like I was getting it all over you, you know, I was getting the shit that was all over me, all over you, and I just couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t plan it, for once," he smirked at the irony. "I just woke up that morning and packed the duffle bag and left. I was in Brazil before I really knew what I’d done, and by then it was too late to write a letter."

Sara cleared her throat as he paused. "But you did write a letter, it was just to Linc instead of me."

Michael, in the process of lifting a hand to rub over his head, froze. "You were still in Panama, then?" he asked.

"I waited. I waited for eight months. Then the letter came, and we all knew you weren’t coming back. So we packed up and came home. I was only here a few months before I went back to India, I did more volunteer work for about a year, and then I came back again, to Chicago, because it’s my home. I even saw Linc and Jane then; that was just after Aldo was born. But you still weren’t back, and Linc didn’t think you’d be back any time soon."

He dropped his hand exhaustedly to the tabletop. "Have you been in touch with Linc all along?" he asked, and she heard the suspicion in his voice instantly.

"No," she answered quickly, and it was the truth. "That was the last time I saw them, when the baby was just a few months old." She glanced at the waitress who walked past them, but didn’t interrupt their conversation. "It was kind of hard to see them. They were really happy, and…" she trailed off.

"What?" Michael probed, reaching across the table to skim his fingers against the back of her hand.

Sara tensed at that light touch. It was nothing, his long fingers barely even touched the top of her knuckles, but it was enough, just the effort of him trying to touch her, to send bolts of longing shooting through her. "That’s when I started thinking about having a baby on my own," she answered, clearing her throat again. "It took me a long time to know for sure it was the right thing, but I still think it was seeing your brother and his family that day that helped the idea to germinate." Sara sighed, pushing the plate in front of her to the left. She wasn’t hungry anymore, in fact, she was starting to feel a little maudlin, and she knew that as much as they needed to talk about these things, she could only take so much. If it were only his light touch on her hand, or his sorrowful eyes, or the knowledge that all this was too little, too late, that would be one thing; but it was all of those things all at once, and she’d noticed she had become hyper emotional with her pregnancy anyway. She needed to get home, and be alone, so she could sob out loud at the ‘whims of fate’ as Michael had called them.

His forefinger circled over the soft skin on the back of her hand and he all but whispered, "I’m sorry. That’s all I can say, Sara. I’m sorry."

Scooting to the edge of the booth, she wrenched her hand from under his and got to her feet as quickly as her burgeoning belly and the edge of the table would let her. "I know you are, Michael. Believe me," she said, a sob catching in her throat as the tears she tried to hold back flooded unheeded towards the surface. "I know. But I need to go. I’m sorry, too."

She felt as ungraceful as a hippopotamus at a ballet, but she somehow got on her feet and got to the door of the diner before she thought about her half of the bill.

The bell rang over her head as she pushed out into the late September evening. The least he owed her was one dinner. She figured he could pick up the tab.

  
  
  


"You’re an ass," Lincoln said, looking at his brother with ill-concealed contempt. 

Michael looked up from his prone position on Linc’s sofa. "Thanks, big brother," he snapped back.

"Just call her. She was upset. Trust me, pregnant women, they’re fuckin’ crazy. She probably went home and cried and now she feels better. If you call her, like you should have a fuckin’ year ago, she’ll be thrilled. You said she was so happy to see you." Linc cuffed Michael on the head like they were both much younger and then sat down in the overstuffed chair next to the sofa.

"I didn’t have a chance to get her number," Michael mumbled into his elbow. He lay on his stomach on the sofa with his head cradled on his folded arms.

"Hey, jackass, ever heard of a phone book? There’s only one Tancredi in the Oak Park area. She’s easy enough to find. Or you could go to her fuckin’ office. I told you when you first got back, she opened a private practice." Lincoln lifted his feet and planted them on the coffee table.

Michael only grunted a response.

"Hey, I’ve got an idea. We’ll pretend we’re in still in fuckin’ junior high, and I’ll call her and pretend I’m you, and I’ll set something up and then I won’t have to look at you and your hang dog expression all day, every fuckin’ day."

Michael cast a disparaging glance at his brother. "Do you have to swear so much?"

"Until Jane gets home with the kids, I’m saying ‘fuck’ as many times as I can. I’m running out of quarters to put in her consequence jar." Lincoln pointed to a jar sitting on top of the television that was half full of shiny coins.

"At least you guys will be able to take a nice vacation next summer, huh?" Michael asked, laughing quietly at the rules imposed by Jane’s anti-potty mouth campaign. When Aldo’s first word beside ‘Momma’ and ‘Papa’ had been ‘fuck’ the crack-down had begun.

"Don’t change the subject, you little shit. Are you gonna call Sara, or do I have to kick your ass?" Linc lifted his leg and stretched it over to land his foot heavily just below Michael’s displayed ass.

Michael looked into his brother’s face. "I’ll call her."

"You promise?" Linc demanded.

"I promise," Michael said, though his stomach knotted into a thousand ropes of pain.

  
  
  


Sara’s relief when Michael called could be heard by her neighbors in a scream of delight that she let loose after she hung up the phone. Then she promptly ran to the bathroom, as quickly as a woman in her condition could run, and hopped in the shower. He was bringing a pizza over and would be there in just a little while, so she had to look casual, but not too casual. She’d have just enough time to wash and dry her hair and put on her newest white maternity blouse she’d just bought the day before.

There was nothing she could do to disguise her girth any longer, not at 27 weeks, but the shirt she’d found at Target the day before at least made her feel feminine.

An hour later, when she opened the door to let him in, she smiled as big as she could manage to show him that the crazy weeper from the week before had departed. She had come home, cried all night practically, but then knew she just couldn’t leave it like that. She didn’t know what could happen between them at this stage, but she knew she didn’t want it to end with him sitting alone in a diner with a half-eaten turkey sandwich. "Come on in," she said enthusiastically.

The pizza was a take-n-bake, so he said, "Point me towards your kitchen, would you?" and she led him through the swinging door into the bright kitchen of her apartment.

He pulled the plastic wrap off the pizza and Sara leaned over his arm to see what the temperature setting was on the instruction sheet. "425," she read aloud, and then she pivoted towards the stove. "Thanks for bringing dinner. Now I owe you two meals," she said conversationally.

"I told you on the phone not to worry about that," Michael said, sliding the pizza in as she opened the oven door.

She watched him as he straightened. Today he wore a short-sleeved crew neck t-shirt, so she could see the tattoos dancing along his arms. Restraining herself from reaching out to trace them with her fingertips, she looked up into his eyes to find him watching her intently. "I know. We agreed apologies were done, right?" she asked.

"Right," Michael nodded. "And while we’re establishing boundaries, let me just get this out of the way—Sara, I’m not looking for anything, you know, romantic."

Sara shook her head, having already prepared a similar statement while she was in the shower. "No, I know, me either."

"I think I really could just use a friend. Someone besides Lincoln, you know, who’s only kind of love is tough love. He threatened to kick my ass if I didn’t call you."

Sara laughed, because she could hear Michael’s brother’s gruff voice in her head. "I could use a friend too," she acknowledged. "One of the things I decided when I decided to have this baby," she smoothed her hand over her belly, "was that I would focus 100% on being a good mom, and doing all of this right, for her, you know? I didn’t exactly swear off romantic entanglements, but then how many men want to date a pregnant lady?"

With great care, Michael reached a hand out and rested his fingers over her hand. "If they were smart, they’d want it really bad," he said softly, his eyes on their hands. Then he lifted his gaze to her face. "But how about an uncle for this baby? I’m a good uncle."

Sara’s breath had seized up in her lungs, but she forced herself to release it, and though it came out shaky and distressingly girly-like, she said, "Uncles are good."

"In that case, I brought the dinner—you were going to provide the movie. So what are we watching?"

Sara grinned, and then twisted her hand around on her belly so her fingers could snag his. "Have you ever seen _Somewhere in Time_?" she asked.

"Uh..." Michael was quiet for a moment as she led him back into the living room. "Is that the one where he finds the penny in his pocket and––"

"Don’t tell me!" she interrupted. "I’ve always heard about it, that he goes back in time somehow and that’s how they meet, but I’ve never watched it, and it’s on TCM tonight, so I thought, instead of something on pay-per-view, we could watch that."

As she grabbed the remote and then sat next to him on the sofa, his arm came up to lay against the back of it, not behind her, because she made sure she was a good distance down the couch from him—because of the ‘just friends’ edict they’d established. "I remember watching it, years ago. I’m pretty sure Veronica forced me and Linc to watch it. It’s a girl movie."

Sara smiled. "Well, next time, we can watch a guy movie, okay?"

Michael returned the smile, inclining his head slightly. "That’s what friends, do, right?" he asked. "Trade off? Right?"

Sara tore her eyes away and looked back at the television. She was pretty sure that was what people in relationships did, but she tried not to dwell on that too much.

  
  
  


As the movie wound up, Sara’s sniffles got louder. When the credits started rolling, Michael, who had carefully not looked over at her, was caught unawares when she hit his shoulder, hard, with her fist. 

He paused in mid-stretch to pick up the empty pizza plates. "Hey!" he cried in surprised outrage.

"How could you let me watch that movie?" she asked, tears streaming down her face. 

Baffled, Michael pointed at the TV. "It was your idea."

"But you knew," she sobbed, covering her face with her hands. As her crying escalated, Michael realized she was really upset, not just having a normal womanly reaction to the tragic ending of the film. She said something else into her palms, but he couldn’t understand a word of it with her tears and fingers blocking the words from his ears.

Awkwardly, he reached over and patted her back. "It’s just a movie, Sara," he said softly, remembering Lincoln’s ‘fuckin’ crazy’ remark from the day before.

"No," she moaned in a grief-stricken voice, "no, it’s not..." Her body was tipping over, he thought, perhaps the weight of the baby and set her off-center, but he suddenly realized she was leaning towards him, and before he could either get closer or get away, her face was planted against his pant leg, and the plethora of tears quickly soaked his Dockers.

He covered her head with both hands, stroking her hair as she shook her head back and forth against his thigh. He was worried about her emotional state, but that worry quickly became overshadowed by his concern for his own physical state. The movie had had a rather tasteful love scene in it, nothing graphic, but for whatever reason—perhaps his 3 year long celibate state, or the fact that Sara turned him on quite easily and he had just made a ridiculous ‘friends only’ pledge to her—but the love scene had definitely affected his libido. Simmering just below the surface was a strong desire to scoop her face up into his hands and kiss her tears away. After that, he wanted to pull the gauzy white blouse she wore from her body and examine the changes pregnancy had brought, and more than anything, he wanted to tug her black lounge pants right off and kiss her deeply, until he was sure that her scent had never faded from his memory any more than the beauty of her body or the softness of her skin had.

Shifting as casually as he could, he edged her face down closer to his knee, and leaned over slightly so his face was near her ear. "Sweetheart, it’s all right. You’re just super sensitive. You know you’d never react this way normally. Here," he whispered, getting his fingers under her chin to lift her face up. "Look at me. It’s all right, see?" He smiled into her red, puffy eyes. "Maybe we could watch a funny movie, and then you’ll laugh so hard you’ll cry, okay? I won’t leave you here like this."

Her eyes cleared then, an awareness coming into them that brought his cock to full attention. This hadn’t been his intention, either; if anything, he’d been trying to get her away from him so she wouldn’t notice the bulge growing his pants. Then, just as quickly, Sara pulled back from him, looking everywhere but directly at him, and got to her feet. "I’m so sorry, Michael. You must think I’m a complete idiot—"

She disappeared into the bathroom, and he could hear her blowing her nose. When she didn’t come back right away, he got up and adjusted the front of his pants before walking over to the slightly ajar bathroom door. "It’s all right. It’s a sad movie. I think you’re just having extreme reactions to everything. I’d even try to take credit for it," he murmured, "but Linc said pregnancy someti—" 

She reappeared in the doorway and interrupted, tissue in hand, "Oh, yeah, it’s definitely the pregnancy, but I still feel like an idiot."

"You’re not," he said softly, restraining his twitching hand from reaching up to touch her face. "You’re not an idiot—you’re just pregnant. I understand."

She smiled, a shaky smile, but a smile nonetheless. "I appreciate you being so understanding, really I do, but maybe we should call it a night."

Michael nodded, feeling relieved. One could only expect a man in his condition to put up with so much temptation, and two and half hours seemed to be his limit.

As he walked down to the El station from her apartment a few minutes later, he convinced himself that each time he saw her, it would get better, easier. Eventually he’d be able to sit in her apartment and not imagine spreading her legs to go down on her. Eventually he’d just see her as the friend he was trying to make her become. Eventually he’d just feel about her the way she felt about him.

  
  
  


Sara’s dreams that night were terrible and disjointed, wonderful and short-lived. She awoke four times, each time breathing heavily from either the terror of Michael disappearing before her eyes ala _Somewhere In Time_ style, or from the brink of orgasm, or from tears that started to fall before she even awoke completely to an insane happiness that even her subconscious realized was false.

When she finally got up at 6am, giving up the fight of sleeping at all, she felt more stupid than she had after she ran from the diner on the first night she and Michael had met up. She couldn’t imagine spending more time with him if every time was going to end in some sort of crazy emotional hurricane, yet the idea of not seeing him again was more painful than anything she’d ever felt before, even his abandonment in Panama.

That was the sad truth; she wanted him somehow, any way she could get him. If they were going to be friends, then she just had to find away to make it work, because she couldn’t continue to behave like this and think he’d put up with it. He was a man, after all. Emotional psychosis, even pregnancy related, was only tolerable for so long, and she knew if she was irritated by it, he couldn’t be far behind, though she was sure Michael had more patience than she ever dreamed of having.

So she went to work and worried about it for two more days before she finally called him. He sounded happy to hear from her, he asked if she’d recovered from the trauma of the film with a laugh and then invited her to his apartment, which he’d only moved into a month previously. "Linc would have been fine with me living with him forever, but I think Jane was really over it, so I’ve got a place near downtown. It’s right up from a Starbucks, so it’s a good location."

When she hung up the phone, she folded the piece of paper with the directions on it and slipped it into her purse. Then she sat down and cried again. Her mother had often said _be careful what you wish for because you just might get it,_ and she finally understood that meaning. After Michael had left her in Panama, all she had wished for was to know that he was all right. So eight months later, a letter came. Then for two years, she wished that she could just see him again, and that maybe he would apologize, and that maybe she could know he was happy. Then she wished he would believe her when she said she wanted to be friends, and that he would buy that she’d cried a river over a 30 year old movie because she was pregnant, not because watching a love story about two people who only had one perfect night together and then were ripped apart by circumstances beyond their control reminded her all too well that she sat on a sofa with a man she loved desperately. She now realized she always would, even though she had tried to stop, to move on, to have a child that had no father, but she’d told herself, didn’t need one anyway. And he wanted nothing from her except a simple, expectation-free friendship. He wanted it so much he was willing to put up with her craziness, because his only alternative was Lincoln, Jane and their two kids.

When she arrived at his apartment, the idea that she was his only friend quickly evaporated, because Lincoln’s oldest son, LJ, was there. She hadn’t seen him since Panama, and so they had happy but slightly awkward reunion as LJ was just on his way out the door.

"He just came up for the weekend," Michael explained once his nephew had left. "He’s going to University of Illinois down in Champaign. We’re going to go catch a movie tomorrow."

"He looks like he’s doing great," Sara commented, dropping her purse and kicking her shoes off next to Michael’s bright red sofa.

"Oh, he is. He met this girl, Laura, last year at some computer seminar, and they’re already talking marriage. I was just trying to tell him he’s got his whole life, and there’s no reason to rush it, but you know kids." Michael waved her to come over into the kitchen portion of the front room, where he was chopping vegetables.

"How old is he now?" Sara asked, carefully getting herself up onto a barstool.

"He just turned 20. I don’t even know why he’s thinking about marriage. When I was 20, it was the last thing on my mind."

"Can I help?" she asked, pointing towards the cutting board he was using to cut up broccoli.

"No," he said, "this is the last of it. I hope you like stir fry." He picked up the cutting board and dumped the vegetables into the Wok on the stove.

"Sounds great," Sara said enthusiastically, her mother’s voice drifting somewhere over her head. As Michael chattered on about LJ, his studies, his girlfriend, and the supreme idiocy of the young, Sara knew she couldn’t do this. She wanted to, with all her heart, she wanted to be able to do it, to be capable of it, but it wasn’t in her to love Michael Scofield as a friend. It wasn’t in her to sit across a counter top from him and not want to embrace him. She could feel the love softening her neck muscles even, and her head tipped slightly as she studied him while he stirred soy sauce into the pan, still talking, but she didn’t hear anything he said. His eyes darted back and forth between what he was cooking and her face, and the short-sleeved shirt he wore today was a dark gray that stole the green and blue shades from his eyes, leaving them a murky, overcast-sky color that made her think of long rainy days in bed. His fingers moved deftly between seasoning bottles and wooden spoons, but she remembered them gliding carefully over her skin, and she felt her entire body heat up with the memory.

Her breasts had become more sensitive with her pregnancy, but now they tightened against the soft material of her bra, growing warm and firm. A slight ache developed between her thighs, and though she knew that the biological preparations her body was making, while out of her control for the moment, would never lead to lovemaking, she let her eyes drift shut while she listened, not to Michael’s words, but to the cadence of his voice, to the dark velvet quality of his tone.

It was the almost falling off the stool, and then jerking her eyes open to see that he had her in his arms and was moving her towards the sofa that brought her back to reality. "Michael?" she questioned, a little disoriented.

"I’ve got you," he murmured, his lips against her temple. And he did, one arm was under her thighs while the other cradled her shoulders against his chest. "You must have had a long day at work, huh? I should have come to your house to cook you dinner." He laid her out on the couch and then tugged the afghan off the back to lay it over her. His hand brushed her hair back from her cheek. "Why don’t you take a little nap? Dinner won’t be ready for a few minutes, anyway."

As his hand skated over the top of the afghan, and subsequently her belly, she reached up and grabbed it. "What happened, Michael?"

He was starting to straighten up from his crouched position by the sofa. "When?" he asked in return.

"What happened in Sona?"

She heard him sigh as well as felt the puff of air against her forehead. "Sara..." he shook his head, and her fear that he would never tell her seized her in an iron grasp. She had avoided even thinking about it, but it was the one thing she didn’t know that she needed to know. She needed to know what was so terrible that she hadn’t been enough, that her undiluted love couldn’t soften the horror of it for him.

She gripped his hand tightly, and scooted to sit up on the sofa. "Please," she begged, tears starting afresh of their own volition. "Please tell me."

Michael held up his free hand and said lowly, "Let me turn the stove off." When he came back a moment later, he had a box of Kleenex, which he set on her lap. Then he sat down next to her, but not right next to her. "Remember when I said I spent six months in Australia?" he asked.

Sara nodded, but wondered if this was just another way to avoid telling her.

"I saw a therapist while I was there, a good one. It helped a lot. Helped me come to terms with the way things were there. I lived in a society, and by the rules of that society, that was completely different than anything I’d ever known. In some ways, Fox River helped prepare me, but it couldn’t entirely, nothing could." He reached for one of Sara’s hands. "I don’t need to relive what happened there, and I won’t, not now, not when I’m finally able to put it behind me. All you need to know is I killed people in there; it was kill or be killed, and I killed. I did what I had to do to survive."

Stupified silence hovered over Sara briefly; she couldn’t believe that was what the problem was. Then she spluttered angrily, "I killed someone, Michael, remember? I was the reason you were even in there! But I didn’t push you away because of it!"

He sighed heavily. "I know. I know. But...my brain doesn’t work like everyone else’s, it’s hard to explain..."

"I know about the LLI," she said vehemently, all gentleness gone from her heart for the moment, so much so, she hardly took in his look of shock at this revelation. "I talked to the shrink you saw before you came to Fox River. But what about me, Michael? What about me! You went into that place because of me, and then you left me, because of me! I don’t care how your brain works! If you loved me, at all, like you said you did, you wouldn’t have done what you did to me!"

Jerking her hand from his, she shook the afghan off of herself and got agitatedly to her feet. He wasn’t looking at her anyway, instead he stared at a point on the floor between his shoes. "Why wasn’t I enough?" she cried.

His head came up then, and the tortured quality of his eyes dented the hardness that had suddenly enveloped her heart. "Sara..."

"Do you see this?" she asked waving her arm back and forth between them. "Do you see the irony of this? We’re here now, and you’ll be my _friend_ , even though I’m apparently crazy, but you couldn’t just tell me what was wrong then? Why, Michael? Why? Why couldn’t you just let me be with you, even if I just had to follow you from Brazil to Europe to fucking Australia? I would have, you know. I would have gone anywhere, and waited however long I had to, just so I knew you were okay."

He stood up abruptly. "I wasn’t okay, Sara! I wasn’t okay for a long time. You being there wouldn’t have changed anything, except you would have grown to hate me for not being able to tell you, for not being able to explain it."

"You think I don’t hate you now? Now that you’re back, and you’re fine, and you’re my _friend_ , and I’m going to have a baby, and you’ll be the uncle? You think I don’t hate you for that?" She gulped air as the voracious words tumbled from her lips.

His eyes narrowed and he flinched back, because obviously that hadn’t occurred to him. "What are you doing here, then? If you hate me so much, if you can’t stand this arrangement that we’ve had for all of a week, what the hell are you doing here?"

The baby kicked right then, hard, and Sara clutched at her belly because of it. "I really am crazy," she murmured, turning away from him. "That’s the only logical explanation."

"Are you all right?" he asked, hovering over her suddenly, his arm outstretched towards her abdomen.

She slapped his hand away. "I’m fine!" she snapped. "I’m just dandy. I can’t do this," she exclaimed, the words all but forcibly jumping from her mouth. "I can’t be here like this with you, I just can’t."

She marched barefooted and purse-less towards his front door, because she really wasn’t thinking clearly at the moment, but he followed close behind her, grabbing at her arm even as she swatted at him again. "Sara, you can’t just leave—"

"Watch me!" she yelled, but then he got a good grip on her arm and spun her so her back was to the door.

Pinning her there, his hands against her shoulders, he said in a voice much too calm for Sara’s spinning emotions. "Let me at least take you—"

She lifted her arms, attempting to shove him back and said, "Oh, nooooo, I don’t think so, this isn’t a date gone badly, this is a fight between _friends_ , right? Just let me slam out of here, and I’m sure in a couple days we can act like it never happened at all!"

"I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop saying the word ‘friend’ like it’s ‘shit’," he growled, pushing his hands against her shoulders roughly. "You may not have meant it, but I did. I wanted us to be friends, but if it’s not possible, I understand."

She still had her closed fists pressed to his chest and she smacked him hard before saying, "Quit being so fucking understanding, Michael. Quit acting like you want me here, when if you’d ever really wanted me, you’d have fought for me!"

His expression defied definition, he looked beyond incredulous, beyond pissed. Where the calm had rested only moments before, he now looked like someone Sara had never seen before. "Are you kidding me?" he asked, moving closer, plucking her hands from his chest like they were the hands of a small child. He spun her around so that her belly wasn’t between them, and then he shoved his hips against her ass. She gasped as she felt the heat and hardness of his erection pressed between her buttocks, and when he thrust against her, she couldn’t fight the moan of longing that gurgled in her throat. "You need to be convinced? I’ve ached for you for three years, Sara. You want the truth? It’s only gotten worse since I saw you on the El, and then I had to get brave enough to talk to you, but now the ache in my gut seems livable compared to the ache in my chest."

Sara’s hands were braced on the door, but she no longer had any desire to walk through it. Her tears had receded with her anger, but now they blinded her as she felt consumed by the emotions Michael Scofield evoked in her. Loving him and hating him were so interconnected now, she wasn’t sure which she felt more, but in that moment with his body pressed tightly to hers, all she wanted to focus on was the need. She needed him, even if she hated him, even if she loved him. She needed him, in the barest sense of the word. And now that she knew he needed her too, she couldn’t imagine walking out the door. "Michael..." she gasped at the same moment his hands moved from where they gripped her arms. His fingers snaked under the hem of her long shirt and caressed up the slope of her belly until her breasts were in his palms, bare and beaded to his touch, her bra magically disintegrating under his hands.

"Please," he breathed against her earlobe, and she almost laughed. Did he really think she had the strength to say no?

Arching in his grasp, she ground her ass back into him and said the only word either of them wanted to hear. "Yes."


	2. Chapter 2

  
_I can stand the test of time  
And as far as I can see  
There are no walls that we can't climb  
Standing between you and me_  
~from _Still Holding On_ by Clint Black  & Martina McBride

“Yes,” she said, her voice so low it reverberated through his entire body.

Michael made quick work of her button up shirt, stripping it and her bra off silently and dropping them to the floor before turning her to face him. He covered the slight swell of her belly with his hands; it was still small enough that both of his hands surrounded it easily. Then he slid his fingers up to dust more caresses against her nipples, which were hard, begging for his mouth, but he didn’t kiss her there, not yet. Instead he stared at the new plumpness of her breasts, her pregnancy having enhanced them beautifully, the tracery of veins under her skin much more pronounced. Finally he lifted his eyes to her face and watched as she moaned in delight to the feather-soft twitches of his fingers over her delicate skin.

Then he raised a hand to grip her neck and pull her mouth to his. Her lips opened instantly, and for a moment, Michael was transported to another time; to when kissing Sara was the most complicated thing in his life, when being this close to her was what he worked for everyday but told himself it wasn’t.

He even remembered when, in a little shack on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, he’d kicked Brad Bellick so hard in the head he’d knocked him out momentarily. He’d known then that everything about Sara was important, and that if he could have one thing work out right, it would be for her to know, to believe, to understand that when he touched her like this, it was the most honest he’d ever been in his life. Yet she still didn’t believe, maybe she never had. Maybe she never could because despite his best intentions his actions had always contradicted his feelings.

Kissing her in Fox River, and on the Amtrak train, and in the small, cramped bedroom of the Panamanian house they’d stayed in had been a vacation from life, a reprieve from what he’d had to do or had done, moments stolen out of time that he’d wanted to last forever. To save himself somehow. It had never been about her.

For the first time, it truly was. He fell into it willingly; pitching forward, pouring everything he felt for her into her mouth so she might feel it, even a little bit. When her hands gripped at his biceps, he felt assured she wouldn’t change her mind, she wouldn’t pull back from him, and this way, with her willingly moving against him, he could show her everything he’d never be able to say.

Sliding his hands down her bare back, he dipped his fingers into the waistband of her pants and underwear, pulling them both off at once. She quivered against him, but he drew his lips back far enough from hers to whisper, “Step forward,” and she did, and then she was totally naked, and his hands couldn’t get everywhere fast enough. Their mouths collided again, tongues thrusting hungrily and breaths beating wildly, as he dragged her towards the couch, the bright red couch that he’d bought because he’d thought of her hair when he’d seen it.

Shifting her gently, he disengaged their lips, so he could set her down on the sofa. She reached up as her body went down, and she asked in a drugged-sounding voice, “Michael?”

“Shhhh,” he whispered, kneeling down in front of her. Her fingers glanced off his face then slid over his shoulders. She tugged at the material of his t-shirt, “Off,” she demanded, though it hardly sounded like a demand because her voice was so breathless. “In a minute,” Michael said. “Lay back,” he said, pushing her until she rested against the cushions of the couch she had vacated like a bullet not very long ago.

His fingers made paths down her thighs, the pressure leaving white trails that faded as quickly as they appeared. Tugging her legs apart, he dropped his head down, his intent clear to her, he was sure. But before he could place his mouth on her, he noticed red lines on the underside of her little belly. Reaching up, he ran a finger over one of them, and Sara arched, moaning softly. “Stretch marks,” he said unnecessarily. “Do they hurt?” he asked, brushing his knuckles against them lightly, which caused her to arch again.

“Not right now,” she breathed, chuckling softly. Their eyes met over the slight bump, and Michael leaned forward to kiss her belly. Sara’s fingers found their way into his hair, and she said, “I like your hair like this, a little longer.” 

He smiled against her stomach. “I keep it short ‘cause it’s curly,” he murmured. 

“I know,” she said simply.

“Sara, I can never make it up to you, but right now, right here, I hope there is no doubt in your mind about how much I want you.” He slipped his fingers between her legs, hardly believing he’d waited this long to touch her as intimately as possible. She was slick and wet and warm, and he felt his cock strain against the fly of his jeans in anticipation.

She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, and made an “Hmmmm,” sound in her throat, her eyes closing as his fingers penetrated her body.

“I want you,” he said again. “I want you, I want you, I want you.” And then he did what he’d been dreaming of for far too long. He lifted her legs, draped them over his shoulders and opened his mouth over the heart of her. She arched again, this time, gasping wantonly, her fingers digging into his scalp, pulling him closer, deeper. He thrust his tongue inside her, the warmth and sweetness of her coating him in remembrance, the taste of her more potent than any whiskey he’d ever had. He knew she was all he needed to be intoxicated for the rest of his life, and as her hips bucked, her body matching the rhythm he’d instigated, he knew he’d never be able to live happily without her.

When she said yes this time, it was loud and clear, and mixed violently with his name.

 

 

Sara came so hard a few minutes later that there wasn’t a muscle in her body that didn’t tremble in the aftermath. She didn’t have the strength to open her eyes, even, but she could hear Michael’s breathing, a harsh, unrestrained quality to it, and she knew he couldn’t wait much longer. She didn’t want him to, she wanted him naked and under her hands, and inside her, the sooner the better, but his tongue and his lips and his teeth had rendered her useless, at least for a little while.

She felt his cheek come to rest against her belly, and she realized her hands were still in his hair, clenched tightly. Every other muscle in her body was like Jell-O, but her hands didn’t want to let him loose. Smoothing her fingers down over the back of his neck, she dipped them inside the collar of his t-shirt. She managed a lazy sounding, “You’re still way overdressed,” and felt her lips curve up in response to his laughter when it bounced off her skin.

His lips grazed her belly again before leaving fleeting kisses on her nipples as he moved back from her, and her hands slipped from around his neck while her legs slid down his shoulders until he caught them in the crook of his elbows to set them gently on the floor. She opened her eyes just in time to see his shirt come off, his fingers hooked in the back of it to drag it over his head and toss it aside. His chest, coated in blue-green lines, looked so achingly familiar to her, she knew she’d seen it in her dreams repeatedly over the last three years.

Words of love itched at the back of her throat, but she couldn’t manage to choke them out. They filled her chest and she felt her eyes sting with new tears. Sliding forward, she reached up again, wrapping her hands around his neck to pull herself up into a sitting position. Then she eagerly reached between them as his hands wove around her back, supporting her, so she could unbutton and unzip his jeans. He was very hard; she delicately released him from the confines of his pants and he burrowed forward fervently, his heartbeat visibly bursting from the engorged head. After pushing his pants and underwear down so they pooled below his ass, she tried to get her hands between them again, but his were right there, keeping her from touching him. “You can’t do anything right now, Sara,” he panted. “I might come at any moment, so let’s not risk it.” When he seemed confident she wouldn’t try to touch him below the waist, he lifted her legs up around his hips and urged her upper body back again into a prone position. Her belly wasn’t so large yet that they couldn’t make love face to face, but it wasn’t going to work well unless she lay back. “We’ve never done this without a condom before,” he said tightly, his cock poised at her entrance.

Their eyes locked as he pushed inside her, and she took a deep, shaky breath. “No, we haven’t,” she agreed gratingly as he filled her. There was no room presently for sorrow over that fact, or that the child within her womb wasn’t his. She was too turned on, and he was too close, she could tell by the sweat on his forehead and the tenseness of his chest muscles. Smoothing her fingers up his abdomen, she flicked his nipples simultaneously with her fingernails, causing him to jerk against and further into her when she knew he was trying with great difficulty to be still. He whimpered a little, but said nothing, though his eyes silently reprimanded her. She rocked her hips, which caused his jaw to clench, the muscles in his cheeks flexing. “Do you think I care if I come again?” she asked. “You just about blew my brains out. This is for you, Michael. This is all for you.” She rocked against him again, but she saw him steel himself, refusing to thrust just yet, even though every little movement she made brought him that much closer to oblivion.

As the struggle went on, Sara became acutely aware of the difference between this lovemaking and the lovemaking in Panama, and it went far beyond the disuse of a condom. He was with her, every step of the way, not mindless in his search for orgasm. His eyes never closed, he never lost his focus on her, and she suddenly knew in way that he could never communicate with words that he was _with her_ , not just inside her searching for something he’d lost, not trying to find something in her that could never appease him; no, this was _making love_ , this was what she never knew she was missing because the only way she’d ever had him was broken, bereft, empty. Now he was whole, and completely with her in the moment. She had a brief vision of the future flash before her eyes as they reconnected and for just a split second she saw that if this wasn’t indicative of the rest of her life, nothing else could ever make it right.

She arched again, demanding with her body that he find his release, that he know the bliss of her touch and her love. He lifted a thumb to his mouth, and she saw his tongue flick out, wetting the end of his finger. Never breaking eye contact, but with a slow, deliberate movement of his hand, he lowered that thumb until it rested between their writhing bodies. When it glanced off her clitoris, she clenched again, every muscle seizing up as they had when his tongue had been in that exact spot. “Oh, God,” she moaned, and finally, she gave up the fight, letting him win by losing it totally, her eyes rolling back in her head as her body convulsed. As she floated back to reality, she felt his hands on her thighs, gripping her hard and pushing her wider to accommodate his pistoning hips. With a rough groan that might have been her name, he came, and the splendid rush of it caused her to lift her knees higher and hug his body with her legs, pulling him even closer in the ending crescendo.

She rose up again, and his softening penis slipped from inside her. She wound her arms around him, pressing her face into the heated curve of his neck to breathe in the musky scent of his exertion. He pulled her close too, seeking what she sought, and silence reigned for a long time.

 

 

Michael kicked his shoes, socks, underwear and jeans to the side as he drew Sara to her feet. Naked, they walked hand in hand into his bedroom climbing together into the neatly made California King sized bed, where both of them curled up towards the center. When Sara lay down on her left side, there was no agreement or discussion, Michael just knew to lay down behind her, to curve his body around hers and draw the sheet over their bodies. They lay like that for a long time, the lethargy of the emotional firestorm they’d been through slowly fading.

Well, it had faded for Michael anyway, because he had a naked woman in his arms, and he hadn’t had one since the last time he’d had this particular one, and it was so much better this time than it had been before that his cock was a little anxious about when the next time would be. He soon discovered it had faded for Sara too, because as her head turned, her hand reached up and wrapped around his neck, tugging his mouth down to hers. They kissed until both of them were panting, until Michael hips moved of their own volition, and he rubbed himself rhythmically against the cleft of Sara’s buttocks. When she arched back in invitation, he broke their kiss to slide down slightly to get into position, hooking his elbow under her leg to open her up for himself.

As the torturous, delightful pressure of Sara’s body enveloped his, sweat broke out all over his skin. He plunged his mind into engineering configurations in an effort to withstand coming too soon, but Sara wiggled back into him and he began to doubt his prowess, because she seemed to reduce him to a 16-year-old boy every time; though much could be said for 16-year-old boys, they certainly had faster recovery times than a 35-year-old man, but suddenly that wasn’t a problem for him either. “Oh, fuck me,” he groaned under his breath as her bottom rubbed at the tops of his thighs enticingly.

“I’m trying,” she breathed, and then she was coming, the gentle undulations of her body sending him into orbit, and not a moment too soon.

When their breathing had slowed again, Michael buried his face in her neck, pulling her tightly against his body. Her fingers tickled over his forearm, softly caressing the hair there. “I love you,” he said, not even meaning to, it just came out of his mouth, unrehearsed.

She tensed in his arms, the unexpectedness of it washing over both of them. He didn’t say anything else; he couldn’t take it back, he didn’t really want to, but he didn’t want her to say anything in response, not if she didn’t feel the same way. When she remained silent, he pressed his lips to her shoulder and snuggled down, intent on resting, maybe even sleeping, and letting his statement remained untouched. But her voice came softly, “We haven’t solved anything, Michael.”

Wishing he could feign sleep, he felt his chest expand on a trapped breath and then he responded, “I know.”

“I want this to be…what it should be. But I wanted that before, and then you just left, and I can’t live like that. I can’t think that tomorrow it will all end. I have a little girl to think about.”

He pulled away, flopping over on to his back. She still lay on his left arm, but she didn’t move to look at him. “All I can do is try to earn your trust, Sara,” he murmured. “And I will. But don’t make the stipulation be that I have to tell you about Sona. What happened there—it’s not like I haven’t talked about it, or dealt with it, I have. I’m different than I was when we were in Panama. If that’s not obvious, then there’s not much I can do to convince you.”

Finally, she turned, propping herself up on an elbow to look at his face. “I _can_ tell. This—“ she indicated them by pointing back and forth between them, “—was totally different than Panama. But _this_ —“ she indicated the bedroom at large, “—is totally different than Panama. It’s been three years. We’re different people. I’m about to have a baby,” she said, her hand resting over her stomach.

“We’re not that different. We still want each other.” Michael adjusted the pillow behind his head to hold him up better. “We’re different better, not different different. Sara, I’ll take you however I can get you, but stripped down and bare is how I want you. But you’re the one who has to tell me how it’s going to be.” He palmed her belly, brushing her own hand aside. “I’ll be there. In every sense of the word.”

She looked at him skeptically. “You were volunteering to be the uncle a week ago, remember?”

“It wasn’t even that long ago,” he argued with slight irritation. “And that was just so I didn’t scare you off. You had run from my presence crying the time before that, remember? And then I left that night because you were crying again. But the truth is I’ve been wanting this for over a year, but I didn’t know how to call you and say that.”

She shook her head dismally, tears welling in her eyes. “I wish you would have called me a year ago.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, knowing what caused the tears, finally feeling as if they were on the same page. He was suddenly standing outside the cigar club telling her in his awkward way that he loved her for the first time, but she was understanding him perfectly, and that was all that mattered. “If she’s yours, she’s mine,” he said, his hand rubbing gently over the mound of her stomach.

The tears spilled over the edges of her eyelids, and Michael wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close again. She sighed tremulously, the shaky puff of air hitting his chest. Her fingers slowly began to move over his skin, tracing patterns in an alarmingly arousing manner. “Michael,” Sara whispered. Then her lips were against his chest, and he gave up the fight of trying to not be affected. “I’m scared,” she said.

“Of what?” he asked, sliding a leg between hers.

“Of all of it. If it doesn’t work; if it does work. If you stay, if you leave.” Her voice was small, coming from under his chin. Her mouth moved up his neck, her tongue leaving a trail of wet fire behind it.

“Don’t be scared,” he whispered. He knew it was clichéd, but it was the only sentence he could come up with as her hand slid over his stomach. “Sara—“ his breath caught in his chest as her fingers surrounded his cock. He dropped a hand to her ass, cupping her firmly and drawing her leg up over his hip. She climbed on top of him, sitting upright as he sank back into the pillows. Closing his eyes, he waited to feel the snug heat of her slide down over him, but instead, her hair trailed over his stomach and thighs and a heat of a different kind surrounded him. His eyes flew open as she made a popping sound with her lips at the head of his cock. Reaching a hand down, he brushed at the tears on one of her cheeks. “I love you,” he said earnestly, willing her to believe it.

She didn’t respond with words, but he was soon convinced that she loved him anyway.

 

 

Within two weeks, Lincoln and Jane were insisting that Michael bring Sara over for dinner at their place. Sara knew this because Michael tried talking her into it for another two weeks, and finally she agreed to go with him.

She wasn’t sure why she was so hesitant to go, but she knew every day, every little thing that happened felt like the other shoe. For almost a month, Michael had been as attentive and doting as any father-to-be could possibly be, as frequent and as inventive a lover as anyone in a new relationship would expect, and as loving and generous with her as any true partner should be. Sara felt happy, but it was always tainted with the idea that bubbles burst so easily, and she couldn’t help believing she was living in a very precarious one.

“Hi, Sara,” Lincoln said, his voice full of laughter as he caught her in a giant hug, lifting her completely off the floor.

Her arms were pinned to her sides and so she couldn’t have returned the hug even if she’d wanted to, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to because there was a teasing glint in his eyes as he set her back on her feet. Audaciously, he smacked her ass and then rubbed his hand over her belly, which seemed like a serious breach of personal space to Sara. Once upon a time she’d known Lincoln pretty well, but she hadn’t seen him for a year and a half, at least, and it had been even longer since they’d lived together in Panama. She was sure he considered his behavior that of the brother-in-law variety, but she just found herself annoyed by the whole scene. Because he most definitely wasn’t her brother-in-law, because his brother wasn’t her husband.

“Linc,” Michael said quietly, a reprimand in his voice.

“Leave that poor girl alone,” Jane said, knocking her husband out of the way. “Hello, Sara,” Lincoln’s wife said, an apologetic grin on her lips. She patted Sara’s shoulder warmly, but didn’t insist on an embrace. “Come in, come in,” she said, waving them all into the living room where a toddler sat spread-eagled in front of the television watching _Finding Nemo_ and a good-sized baby lay on her back under a toy mobile. “Dinner won’t be ready for a bit, so have a seat.”

Michael’s arm surrounded Sara’s waist and guided her towards a loveseat near the baby, who gurgled and waved her arms, errantly hitting the dangling Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck figures hanging over her head. As she sat down, Sara couldn’t help the need to lean down and whisper a hello to the baby, gently pinching at the fat little legs that were exposed by a pink onesie. “If you want to hold Rosie, you can,” Lincoln offered, reaching for the remote to turn down the movie Aldo was watching.

“Loud,” Aldo said, looking back at his father, who quickly hid the remote behind a throw pillow. “Daddy, loud!”

“That’s as loud as it gets, buddy,” Lincoln said.

Sara resisted for a few minutes, but when Michael reached down to get the baby, she slapped his hands away. “No, I want to,” she said quietly. Moving the mobile, she slid her hands under Rosie’s arms and lifted the baby up so she could see her better. She saw very little of Lincoln as she looked at the small, serious face of Rose ‘Rosie’ Burrows. 

“Looks just like her Momma, huh?” Lincoln asked proudly, and Sara sent him a little smile of agreement.

“She’s beautiful,” Sara said sincerely. “A bit serious, though, huh?” 

“Smiles are rare, but therefore treasured,” Jane said, sitting on the arm of the couch that Lincoln had sprawled on. “She doesn’t cry much either. She’s just content to watch people.”

“How old is she?” Sara asked, looking back at the baby, who was kicking her little legs against Sara’s belly.

“Almost five months,” Michael offered.

“She’s big,” Sara said, hefting the baby up a little. “How much does she weigh?”

“She is big,” Jane said. “At her last check up she was 18 pounds.”

“Eats like a pig,” Lincoln offered.

“Just like her daddy,” Jane chimed in.

Lincoln looked up at his wife, reaching a hand up to squeeze her leg. There was a quiet happiness in their house, a feeling Sara remembered from being with Jane and Lincoln in Panama. She knew it hadn’t happened overnight; they had struggled too, each bringing their own issues to the table, but it had smoothed out for them much sooner and easier, Sara thought in retrospect, than it had for her and Michael. Of course, Lincoln hadn’t been in Sona with Michael, Lincoln had been with her and Jane getting Michael out of Sona.

Jane got up to go check on the food, and Sara cuddled Rosie to her chest. The baby snuggled into her, and then grabbed a handful of Sara’s hair, yanking hard. When she yelped, and started laughing, Michael helped extricate her from the baby hand clamp, laughing softly too, and cooing to his niece about being nice to ‘Aunt’ Sara.

“So…” Lincoln said, drawing Sara’s attention back to him as Michael was still unwinding long red strands of hair from Rosie’s small fingers. “When are you guys getting hitched?”

Sara gasped out loud. She couldn’t help it; the question was totally unexpected and caught her completely off guard.

Michael shook his head, though he didn’t seem _that_ surprised by the remark. “Linc, shut up.”

“What?” Linc asked, a little obnoxiously. Okay, a lot obnoxiously. “That whole ‘just friends’ thing worked for what four days? I just figured this whole ‘dating’ thing would go a lot quicker.”

“Linc, _shut up_ ,” Michael said, almost hissing at his brother.

“Come on, Sara, what’s the hold up?” Lincoln asked, flashing a smile at Michael before turning his gaze totally on Sara.

“Linc!” Michael smacked a hand down on the arm of the loveseat he and Sara sat on.

Rosie flinched at the sound, and Sara felt at a loss. It was neither Michael’s fault that he didn’t want Lincoln bothering her about it, nor was it Lincoln’s for wondering what they were doing, considering the state of Sara’s stomach. It wasn’t a normal dating situation, and she knew that, but _marriage_? She looked more closely at Michael and a sinking sensation flooded her. There was a guilty flush to Michael’s naturally olive skin, and she had the realization that she was the last one arriving at the party. When she said, “We aren’t talking about marriage yet,” it sounded far away, as though someone else had said the words.

“Maybe _you_ aren’t—“

“Lincoln, shut the fuck up!” Michael exclaimed, getting to his feet.

Aldo’s head swiveled around on his little shoulders, his interest in sea turtles interrupted by a bad word, not to mention a sudden tension that caused Rosie’s brow to pucker up. Jane reappeared just then, concern etched on her face. “Michael? What’s wrong?” she asked, her gaze alternating between her husband, Michael and Sara.

Sara watched speechlessly as Michael attempted to play it off, digging into his jeans pocket for a quarter and walking over to drop it into the consequence jar he’d told Sara about. Lincoln looked a little dumbfounded, and mumbled an apology before hopping up and wandering into the kitchen on some pretext.

“Jane, would you mind taking Rosie?” Sara asked, offering the baby to her mother. “Michael, could I have a word?” she asked, getting to her feet as Jane swung Rosie on to her hip.

Rubbing his hands agitatedly over his head, he gave a stiff nod and then Jane gestured with a shoulder down the hall. “You guys can use one of the bedrooms if you like.”

Sara let Michael lead the way, because she didn’t want to choose which room they’d use. When he walked all the way to the end of the hall, and then shut the door behind her once she was over the threshold, she felt certain he was hoping whatever was said wouldn’t be distinguishable from the front of the house. Before she could say anything, he started in with, “You know, Linc, he was just trying to get a rise out of me.”

“It worked, quite well,” she murmured, folding her arms over her breasts.

“You’re mad, aren’t you?” he asked, the tentative tread of a man who knew he was dealing with an emotional spasmodic coming off him in nearly tangible waves.

“I’m not the one who had to put a quarter in the swear jar,” she said, watching him as his face filled with color again. When he just looked at her, she said, “Why did you tell him about our ‘friends only’ let’s-fuck-like-crazy week? Some things are private, Michael.” She didn’t really care about that, but she was unsure of what she did care about, exactly.

He looked only mildly sheepish as he said, “I didn’t tell him. He just knew. Guys can tell, you know, when…”

“Their buddies get laid?” she supplied when he hesitated.

“He’s my brother, Sara. And my best friend. Most things he knows, even if I don’t tell him. And I don’t tell him stuff about our sex life, just for the record. I agree that’s private.”

“Why does he think you want to get married so bad?” There, she’d said it, asked it, put it out to the universe.

Pursing his lips, Michael sighed and swung away from her. He walked to the window that overlooked Lincoln and Jane’s backyard. He fiddled with the Venetian blind cord, but took a very long time to mumble, “I don’t want to get married ‘so bad,’ I mean…”

“What?” she asked loudly when she had a hard time hearing him. “Please don’t give me that whole ‘I can be a good uncle’ bullshit again. Say what you really feel, for God’s sake!”

He still didn’t look at her. He remained by the window, playing with blinds, and then finally he turned his head just slightly, so she could see his profile distinctly. “I want to marry you, Sara. _You_. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to marry, and Linc—well, besides being a pompous ass, he thinks I’m an idiot for not just jumping on all of it. He’s lectured me endlessly about the time I wasted, what we lost because I didn’t call you when I got back to Chicago. I should have called you and told you, you are it for me, and that whatever else is going to happen, none of it matters, not without you, but I just don’t think you’re ready to hear me say something like that.”

Maybe she wasn’t ready to hear it, but that didn’t change the fact that it flooded her with warmth and hope to hear it anyway. “You’re still worried about scaring me off, is that it?” she asked, moving closer to him.

He glanced at her over his shoulder as she got near. “You don’t even believe me when I say I love you.”

Surprised, Sara asked, “What makes you think that?” She came to a stop once she was within arms-length of him.

“Because you never say it back,” he said, and in that short phrase, he reminded her infinitely of the small boy who lived inside him. They had spent those preceding weeks talking, and yes, having lots and lots of sex, but as he’d revealed all the things about his life to her, including a childhood stripped of parents much too early, she’d come to know the man that was Michael Scofield. She no longer believed he’d leave her in the dead of night, but she did wonder if he could really be as normal, as okay, as he seemed to be, knowing all the terrible things that had happened to him.

She reached a hand up and touched his shoulder. “I love you, like crazy, Michael Scofield, but I’m still not sure…”

“I know, I know. And I’m fine with that!” he said emphatically, turning to face her fully. “I made you wait for so long, Sara, the least I can do is wait until you are sure. I _will_ wait. As long as I have to. Don’t pay any attention to Linc. He’d have the whole world married and popping out babies, because he thinks what makes him happy will make everyone else happy. He doesn’t get that people are _different_.” She willingly let him pull her into a tight hug.

As his hands rubbed her back soothingly, she wondered if Michael had any clue that he wasn’t different at all.

 

 

A few days later, they had returned to Sara’s apartment from the Childbirth class Sara had signed up for before Michael came back into her life. He had been thrilled when she asked him to go with her, and to be her coach, and after their second meeting with the other expectant mothers, Michael was feeling particularly satisfied with his life.

Sara had gone to the kitchen to make some tea, but he lay down on the sofa and flipped the television on. Life was as good as he could imagine, and far better than he had, because he’d never imagined this. Sara was still skittish, but he figured if he maintained his affection, his attention and his commitment to her and the baby, all that would work itself out in good time. For once the plan he had seemed to be going accordingly, and he had no complaints.

Just as he found a program all about childbirth on TLC, he heard Sara’s voice, “Michael! Michael, come here!”

He jumped up at the sound and ran to the kitchen; her voice sounded scared and urgent, and as he pushed through the swinging door, she stood with one hand braced on the counter and the other clutching at her belly. “What’s wrong?” he asked, moving towards her quickly.

“I don’t know. Something though—I just had a really strong contraction.” Her eyes sought his desperately. “I’m only 32 weeks along! I can’t have this baby yet.”

“Maybe it’s that Braxton Hicks, like Kathy said.” He referred to the leader of the birthing class. “It’s probab—“

“Michael, shut up!” she interrupted. “I need to go the hospital right now. _Right now_.” Deferring to the doctor was easy, especially when she snapped at you, so Michael wrapped his arm around her and led her out of the kitchen. “The tea!” she said, looking back over her shoulder. Michael dashed back across the kitchen and turned the stove off as well as moved the teakettle to a cool burner. Within five minutes they were in Sara’s car and on their way to the hospital.

By the time Sara was admitted to the ER, and the doctor came in to access the situation, in which he assured her that everything was fine, and that in fact “Mr. Scofield called it correctly,” with the Braxton Hicks, Michael knew that both his and Sara’s blood pressure had to be through the roof. The fact that she’d overreacted so drastically was comical and distressing at the same moment, and Michael had the insane urge to laugh his anxiety away, but he knew if he did Sara was likely to come unglued.

She came unglued anyway, about ten minutes after they returned back to her apartment. He was trying to make sure she was comfortable in her bed when she swatted at his hands and yelled, “Quit hovering over me!” Michael stepped back, hands raised in surrender, and before he could offer an apology, because he knew he _was_ hovering, Sara said, “Just get out. Just get out, Michael, just go,” and she promptly broke down in tears.

“Sara, sweetheart—“ and the need to hover overcame him again and he sat next to her on the bed, pulling her against his chest.

She fought him, pushing against him and ranting sobbingly, words mixed with a torrent of tears that he neither could understood nor wanted to obey anyway, so he just wrapped his arms more tightly around her until she finally wore herself out. When she gave up the fight and just lay with her face against his chest, crying weakly, he tucked his hand under her chin, pulling her mouth to his for a gentle and loving kiss. She was a mess, make-up was smeared all over her face and her eyes were red, swollen and filled with a mixture of rage and embarrassment that had no description other than Lincoln’s ‘fuckin’ crazy’ statement from several weeks earlier. Then he offered her the only thing he truly thought she didn’t want, but somehow thought that was the answer to her confusion. “I will leave if you want me too. But I’ll never be gone, Sara. You, and this baby, are everything to me. Maybe there’s no way to prove to you, in this small amount of time we’ve got before she comes, that I’m serious, that this is real, that I won’t ever leave, even if you give me every reason to go. The only way I’d ever leave is if you really wanted me to. And truth be told, I don’t think you really want me to.”

Tears streaked down her cheeks, but she just shook her head. Burying her face against his chest, her arms clung tightly to him, and she broke totally. She’d held it together all the way to the hospital and home again, though he was sure she was scared to death, and even after she’d been reassured everything was okay, she just had it in her head that it wasn’t and she couldn’t quite let it go. Now, her tears came from deep within, and Michael couldn’t help but think they had more residue of Panama on them than a few false labor contractions.

He spoke softly, into the top of her head as she quieted. “You remember how you told me, on the Amtrak a million years ago, that you weren’t using?” She nodded under his chin. “Did you ever think that you said that to scare me away, to remind me that you’re an addict, and that even though right then you weren’t, there was always the chance that you could be using?”

She lifted her head so that she could look into his eyes. Wiping at her face with the sleeve of her shirt, she studied his face intently. “I don’t know why I told you that. I guess I just wanted you to know what you were getting into. If you wanted to get into it.”

He framed her face in his hands. “I wanted to get into then, and I still want to get into now. Don’t you see, Sara? This is how it works. I’m screwed up, you’re screwed up, but we love each other and we stick together. I don’t know what else I can do to show you that I’m serious.”

“I know you’re serious,” she said softly.

“Then what is the problem?” he demanded a little harsher than he intended. “Sara, just marry me. Just forget about test runs, and all the stupid mistakes I made before. Just trust this. Trust what you feel right now, in this moment. Trust _me_.”

When she said nothing, but stared with wet eyes at him, he smiled with one side of his mouth. “You think Linc would ever let me leave you, anyway? I’d be better off dead. In fact, I would be dead, because he would kill me with his bare hands.”

She half-laughed, half sobbed and shook her head stiffly between his hands. “I don’t want you to stay because you’re afraid of your brother,” she said softly.

“Oh, Sara, for the love of God! I—“ but he didn’t finish because her mouth found his and she kissed him, preventing the stream of frustrated words.

When she drew back a moment later, she took an unsteady breath and said, “I guess I’m making it more complicated than it needs to be, huh?”

Michael paused, a hope filling him that he hadn’t dared to let grow until just this moment. “I’ve been guilty of that too,” he said diplomatically.

She smiled. “But lately, it’s been more me than you.”

He gave a hesitant, “Yes.”

“You promise to take me to the hospital, even if it’s something stupid, and you know it’s something stupid?” she asked, her hands lifting to frame his face as well.

“Um, sure, since I just did that,” he said, laughing with her when she started chuckling.

“It’s not that I don’t want to believe,” she said seriously, her fingers brushing against his cheeks gently. “I mean, when I look in your eyes, I believe it. When we make love, I believe it—just now, at the hospital, I believed it. I did. I guess it’s just _knowing_ it that’s the hard part.”

Michael wiped away the stray mascara with his fingers, and then jostled her a little bit in his arms until they weren’t clutching at each other’s faces any longer, instead they just had their arms around each other. “Are you scared about giving birth?” he asked.

Sara gave him a withering look. “You know I am, we talked about that at class tonight.”

“But after Christina gets here, once she’s here, what do you think you’ll feel?” Michael rested a hand on her stomach, squeezing slightly.

Sara put her hand on top of his. “It will be worth it,” she said, repeating what she’d said earlier that evening. Kathy had had each of the expectant mothers say their biggest fears, but also what they expected to feel after the birthing process had occurred.

“I could have called a year ago, Sara, it’s true. And I could beat myself up about it—“

“Or just let Linc do it,” she offered with a laugh.

“—yeah, I could,” he agreed. “But here’s what it is: we have to see what we’ve got, the way it is, and from where I’m standing it seems pretty great. I don’t want to pressure you, but I do want you to accept _this_. Accept it. I love you. I always have, and I always will. I want to be married to you, and I want to adopt this child we are already calling by my mother’s name. I’m just waiting for you to say okay.”

Sara wiped at her face, and Michael thought it strange, because the tears were finally gone. As if realizing that herself, Sara whispered, “Okay.”


End file.
